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Downsizing Blog

I’ve argued that the centralization of government spending in Washington over the past century has severely undermined good governance. Citizens get worse outcomes when funding and decisionmaking for education, infrastructure, and other things are made by the central government rather than state and local governments and the private sector. The problem is the same in the European Union, as a new article in Bloomberg on the funding of Polish airports illustrates:

George Pataki, the governor of New York from 1995 to 2006, is expected to announce the launch of his presidential campaign tomorrow. Pataki joins an already crowded Republican field and is expected to highlight his record as governor to win support. A review of Pataki’s record presents a question: which Pataki will be running for the presidency?

Marvin Horne doesn’t look like a man in open rebellion against the United States government, but the 70-year-old raisin farmer and his wife Laura have had enough. If they get their way, they’re not going to let the U.S. Raisin Administrative Committee take their raisins anymore.

The Senate Commerce Committee held a fascinating hearing on Wednesday regarding air traffic control (ATC). The hearing showcased the momentum to proceed with ATC restructuring. Because aviation is crucial to the economy, such a reform would create wide-ranging benefits.

On large and complex government projects, costs will double from the original estimates. This tendency is called Edwards’ Law of Cost Doubling.The Wall Street Journal reports on the PATH rail station at the World Trade Center. Edwards’ Law was in effect:

From this incident, it appears that the EPA is not serious about taking opposing public comments into account before engaging in regulatory action. The purpose of public comments is to gauge public sentiment before a final rule is issued. The agency should act as an unbiased arbitrator of comments, not as an advocacy organization.

Congress has created an ongoing crisis in the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). Year after year, policymakers spend more on highway and transit aid to the states than the HTF raises from gas taxes and other dedicated revenues. CBO projects that annual HTF spending will be $53 billion and rising in coming years, while HTF revenues will be $40 billion. That leaves an annual funding gap of at least $13 billion.

Government spending on highways and streets (light blue) and transportation (brown) have been roughly flat the past five years after surging the prior five years. It is spending on education (dark blue) that has plunged, and which has dragged down overall government construction spending. I don’t know why construction on schools and colleges soared and then plunged, but that is the main cause of the recent downward trend in public construction, not any form of transportation.

In the wake of the terrible train crash near Philadelphia, people are asking whether Amtrak budget cuts could have been a contributing factor. The short answer is that federal rail spending has not been cut. The longer answer is that rail spending has been greatly misallocated by Congress. Rather than being spent on maintenance along heavily used corridors (particularly in the Northeast), the federal rail budget has been frittered away on uneconomical rural routes and high-speed rail schemes.